Entry #4, Cait Barrett Demon Fish

This week Ben and I worked with Life Act fish, and attempted to cross and identify mutant fish in the tanks that were existing. In order to cross the fish we set up a male and female in mating boxes, which are small tanks designed to hold 1 or 2 fish. Since zebrafish will eat their eggs when they are laid, the fish are placed into a holding basin that has a net in the bottom. This net allows the eggs to fall to the bottom of the tank through the net, while the fish remain in the white holding piece. The tanks also have to be given a fake grass, as some female zebrafish will beat up the males and the grass provides a hiding spot for them. Finally we have to lid the tanks, because zebrafish are extremely jumpy and will flop out of the tank and onto the counter if not lidded.

After we collected all the eggs, we placed them into Petri dishes based on the pair they came from. To identify if they were carrying the Life Act mutation we had to look under a fluorescent microscope to see if the fish had red eyes. I was unsure if this would actually work, but after we heated up the fluorescent scope we placed the color of the bulb on the red light wave. We began to see fish with the red eye mutation marker, and counted the fish on each plate to see the ratio of mutants to wild type. The fish with red eyes looked almost like little demon fish from a sci-fi movie. From these ratios we could tell if the parents were homozygous for the mutation or heterozygous. There was a trend toward homozygous mutant fish, which was good because those were the fish Ben and I were interested in. We also ended up finding a three eyed fish that we named Triclops (original, I know).  We separated him from all the other fish in an attempt he would survive, but sadly he did not. This a fish with a red eye mutation alongside a wild type. 

In this picture it may be hard to tell but if you look at the clear region above the yolk sac and below the eyes you can see a pink dot on one side and then in the other picture the pink appears on the opposite side. This is because the pink is the blood of the fish beating through the translucent heart.